The effect of trait procrastination on creativity

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The effect of trait

procrastination on

creativity

BACHELOR’S THESIS

NINA VERSPEEK - 11293020 TUTOR: WENDELIEN VAN EERDE

UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION WORD COUNT: 5679

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Statement of Originality

This document is written by Student Nina Verspeek who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document.

I declare that the text and the work presented in this document are original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it.

The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.

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Abstract

Chronic procrastination is a common phenomenon that occurs when individuals are postponing the start or completion of tasks so frequently that it becomes a habit. The act of procrastination can influence someone’s ability to perform a task in a creative way. We propose that trait procrastination affects creativity in a negative way. To explain this relationship, we use the term negative affect. Individuals who procrastinate often suffer from a low self-image and it often results in a narrow attentional focus and therefore hinders creativity. Emotional stable individuals perform better at their tasks, as they are calmer and can handle negative feelings better. We expect that having a higher procrastination trait has a direct negative effect on creativity (H1), as well as the indirect negative effect on creativity through negative affect (H2). However, we also expect that the negative indirect effect of procrastination through negative effect on creativity is moderated by emotion regulation (H3). In other words, if a person is able to regulate negative into positive emotions and moods, there is less impact of negative affect on creativity. We tested these hypotheses through means of a cross-sectional questionnaire design, among 377 participants. The hypotheses were rejected, but the

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Introduction

Procrastination is generally perceived as a self-regulatory deficiency (Grund & Fries, 2018). It is not an uncommon phenomenon as most of us are familiar with the act of putting off tasks from time to time. According to Steel (2007) about 80-95% of college students procrastinate sometimes, and even 50% do this on a regular basis. These numbers are still rising and can partially be explained by the arrival of smartphones. Social media is nowadays a significant part of our daily lives and it is considered as one of the most important activities associated with distraction and procrastination (Rozgonjuk, Kattago & Täht, 2018). Besides college students, adults are also affected by

procrastination. In 2007, around 15%-20% of adults were experiencing chronic procrastination (Steel 2007), which has been growing ever since (Rozgonjuk, Kattago & Täht, 2018). Chronic

procrastination occurs when individuals are postponing the start of completion of tasks so frequently that it becomes a habit (Ferrari et al., 1997).

The act of procrastination can influence someone’s ability to perform a task in a creative way. Performing a task in a creative way involves creating useful and novel ideas, solutions or processes (Zanjani, Yunulu & Beigh, 2020). Multiple factors can influence someone’s creative process, for example time pressure (Zanjani et al., 2020). There have been several studies that have researched the effect of procrastination on creativity. Previous research has concluded that procrastination can be beneficial for creativity, if it is managed appropriately. Shin and Grant (2020) show that moderate procrastination benefits the creative process of a task. Finishing a task as soon as possible can result in a situation where people are not trying new things and therefore only focus on obvious content. When people procrastinate moderately, they enter a state of defocused attention. In this state they can get access to less straightforward information and let their ideas mature to be less obvious. However, the way Shin and Grant (2020) use the concept of procrastination can also be perceived as deliberate delay. This research focusses on irrational trait procrastination, which is a specific kind of

procrastination where people even procrastinate if bad outcomes are to be expected. This irrational delay might be connected to someone’s insecurities and way of thinking. This is because individuals who experience insecurities and are vulnerable and worried often experience difficulties with making decisions. These individuals are not confident with making wise decisions about their time planning on their own (Milgram & Tenne, 2000). Therefore, we link procrastination and creativity to negative affect.

Shin and Grant (2020) have shown that there is a curvilinear relationship between

procrastination and creativity. However, we want to know if and how trait procrastination influences creativity. Therefore, the goal of this paper is to investigate how trait procrastination affects creativity. As especially personality factors can affect this outcome (Zanjani et al., 2020), we also take two variables into account that might mitigate or reinforce this relation. According to Staiton, Lay and

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Flett (2000), individuals who procrastinate suffer from a low self-image and negative affect. In addition to their research, this research will also investigate if negative affect can explain the

relationship between trait procrastination and creativity, and if this possible relation can be moderated by emotion regulation. When people procrastinate in connection to their insecurities and way of thinking, they can possibly turn this negative affect around by regulating their emotions and becoming emotional stable (Zanjani et al., 2020). As the emotion regulation strategy tries to change the

perception of a negative situation or its consequences, the effect of negative affect on creativity might be influenced.

This research investigates how trait procrastination, mediated by negative affect, influences creativity. In addition, we want to gain insight in how emotion regulation strategies can influence this relationship. Therefore, the research question is: “How does trait procrastination influence

creativity?”.

Figure 1: conceptual moderated mediation model

This study will investigate the relation between trait procrastination and creativity, relative to the two main concepts ‘negative affect’ and ‘emotion regulation’, shown in Figure 1. This research will contribute to the existing literature by focusing specifically on trait procrastination that is different from moderate procrastination or strategic delay. In addition, it will show the connection to negative affect and how it might be moderated by emotion regulation. This insight will increase our

understanding of the role of negative affect and how emotion regulation affects creativity. To answer the research question, the report is structured as followed: first it will discuss the theoretical

framework that is the focus of the research. Subsequently, there will be a further presentation of the proposed methods and data analysis. Then, the results will be presented and discussed, followed by the conclusions.

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Theoretical Framework

To answer the research question, the key concepts ‘procrastination’, ‘creativity’, ‘negative affect’ and ‘emotion regulation’ need to be defined and connected to each other.

Trait Procrastination (IV)

Procrastination is commonly defined as “a disposition to postpone performing a task or making decisions” (Zhou & Kam, 2017, p. 854). There is a difference between strategic delay and true procrastination (Klingsieck, 2013). Strategic delay happens when someone intentionally decides to perform a task at a later point in time. Strategic delay occurs when the negative consequences of the delay itself are ruled out by the benefits that will appear in the long run of the delay (Klingsieck, 2013). However, often there is an irrational delay of intended behavior, even if is clear that it will result in a negative outcome. If the delay is unnecessary and it is known that it might be harmful for the result of the task, it can be distinguished from strategic delay as procrastination (Klingsieck, 2013).

There are two different forms of procrastination: ‘state procrastination’ and ‘trait

procrastination’. State procrastination typically means that a person is engaging in dilatory behavior

of a specific task, examples are avoiding doing homework or submitting an assignment. On the other hand, the concept of trait procrastination is used for the habit to delay what someone needs to do in order to reach a goal (Zhou & Kam, 2017). Trait procrastination is a part of someone’s personality, as individuals have learned to engage in this behavior in situations where they need to perform. Trait procrastination is not only a result of bad time-managing, it is a “complex interaction of behavioral, cognitive, and affective components” (Warshaw, 2018, p. 4). According to Lay and Schouwenburg (1993), trait procrastinators are engaging in procrastination to protect their esteem through self-handicapping, this way they avoid experiencing anxiety that is associated with a specific task.

the avoidance of aversive tasks, an avoidance of state anxiety, a response to their fear of failure or perfectionist tendencies. These people are also known to lack self-regulation and self-management capabilities. Therefore, trait procrastinators cannot predict the time they need to complete a task. When deadlines come closer, they get overwhelmed with all the work they still need to do, which makes them feel more insecure about their capabilities (Zanjani et al., 2020). Trait procrastinators put away tasks or goals without actually thinking about the tasks, instead they might be caught up with their insecurities about making the deadline.

Creativity (DV)

Creativity can be defined as ‘the ability to produce original work that fits within a particular task or domain constraints’ (Barbot, Besançon & Lubart, 2016, p. 3). According to Hughes, Furnham and Batey (2013), creativity is the process and abilities that facilitate the generation of new, imaginative,

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useful and valuable ideas and products. Creativity is often related to artistic products or services, such as music, art and literature. However, creativity is also an important factor in creating innovative ideas and products as a result of problem solving in unexpected ways (Hughes et al., 2013). Ideas or products that are considered as novel as well as useful can be described as creative; they have the key characteristics of creativity (Furnham, Batey, Anand & Manfield, 2008).

A novel idea is also described as original. An idea should be original or unique in order to be creative. However, an idea has to be more than only original if it has to be creative. Ideas that are solely original might be original for a reason, because they might not make sense in connection with the purpose of the idea (Runco & Jaeger, 2012). Therefore, an idea also needs to be useful, or in other words as effective or appropriate. The interaction between originality and effectiveness within the concept of creativity is often described as: “Originality is vital, but must be balanced with fit and appropriateness” (Runco & Jaeger, 2012, p. 92). Therefore, an idea is creative when it is original, but not random. It has to fit the purpose of the idea.

There are two common theoretical perspectives of creativity, the person-centered perspective and the general perspective. The person-centered view is usually connected to personal characteristics like intelligence (Furnham et al., 2008). The general perspective takes, besides personal

characteristics, also the role of thought processes and the environment in which creativity originates into account. This research uses creativity as a multi-faceted understanding that does not solely rely on personal characteristics. For example, time pressure is considered as an important environmental factor in the development of creative ideas (Zanjani et al., 2020). Here, creativity is thus used as a dependent variable that can be influenced by many other variables in someone’s environment.

Relationship between trait procrastination and creativity

According to Shin and Grant (2020), the intentional delay of tasks results in a situation of defocused attention, where the unconscious mind is processing the task and exploring different and unusual ideas while the individual is busy doing other things. As the individual who performs this specific type of procrastination plans the delay ahead, they also take the time they need to work on the task into account. Therefore, they do not leave the actual performance of the task until the last minute and will not experience high time pressure. In contrast to the findings of Shin and Grant (2020), it appears that true trait procrastinators do not have the time to let a task develop in their minds to produce creative ideas (Zanjani et al., 2020). Trait procrastinators are usually easily distracted and move from one activity to another without their unconscious mind using the time gap to process the task and create novel ideas (Zanjani et al., 2020). They start engaging with the task last minute when the deadline is already close, the corresponding time pressure results in a situation where they seek more obvious ideas to save time. As a result, trait procrastination might have a negative effect on an individual’s creativity. Therefore, we hypothesize:

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H1: Trait procrastination negatively affects creativity.

Negative Affect

The term affect refers to “a subjective feeling state that incorporates long-lasting mood states, such as cheerfulness or depression, as well as more specific ones, such as happiness or anger.” (Baas, de Dreu & Nijstand, 2008, p. 781). Mood and emotions are components of affect, where emotions are strongly correlated to a particular incident or person (Baas et al., 2008). Negative affect is connected to

someone’s personality to frequently struggle with negative emotions and a negative self-image (Mor & Winquist, 2002). When someone expects a situation to be unfavorable, they can get negative feelings that could lead to anxiety, dysphoria or despair (Carver & Scheier, 1990). When someone is vulnerable and experiences rejection, the negative feedback can result in increased creativity, as long as the task is not perceived as too difficult. In line with this statement, the study by Akinola and Mendes (2008) show that when someone experiences negative affect in a situation that calls for creativity, they might feel that they need to put in extra effort to find a creative solution.

Emotion Regulation

Aldao, Nolen-Hoeksema & Schweizer (2010, p. 218) define emotion regulation as “processes through which individuals modulate their emotions consciously and unconsciously to appropriately respond to environmental demands”. People use emotional regulation as a strategy to influence the intensity or type of emotional experience. Reappraisal and problem-solving strategies are used to regulate

emotions. Reappraisal strategies emphasize positive interpretations of a negative or stressful situation, reducing distress. Problem-solving strategies try to change a stressful/negative situation itself or its consequences (Aldao et al., 2010).

Emotion regulation can improve someone’s emotional stability, which can turn negative affect around into positive affect. According to Zanjani et al. (2020), emotional stability is complementary to someone’s capability to plan ahead and finish their tasks in time. A strategy that is frequently used is the cognitive reappraisal strategy. Cognitive reappraisal targets an individual’s ability to change their interpretation or judgement of an emotion-eliciting situation (Buhle et al., 2014). It is often used in cognitive psychotherapy to turn emotions around by explaining the situation in such a way that it changes it emotional impact (Moore, Zoellner & Mollenholt, 2008). Individuals who can use the emotion regulation strategy can get emotionally more stable, as they have more control over their emotion regulation and are less at the mercy of their emotions.

This results in an increased positive and confident personality. According to Salgado (1997) emotional stable individuals perform better at their tasks, as they are calmer and can handle negative feelings better.

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The role of negative affect and emotion regulation on the relationship between trait procrastination and creativity

According to Staiton, Lay and Flett (2000), individuals who procrastinate suffer from a low self-image and negative affect. Trait procrastinators often have negative automatic thoughts about several themes. For example, trait procrastinators often experience negative thoughts about working on a project such as “I’ll never finish” or “I can’t get started”, these thoughts are not motivating someone to start with their project (Staiton et al., 2000).

Positive affect is often related to the development of new and useful ideas, as it stimulates cognition and cognitive flexibility (Bledow, Rosing & Frese, 2013). On the other hand, negative affect is mostly viewed to have a negative effect on creativity. As emotions and affect play a crucial role in creativity the emotions have to be regulated (Ivcevic & Brackett, 2015). Emotion regulation itself does not result in finishing a task in a creative matter, it helps people to achieve an open mindset that can generate new ideas and insights. For example, regulating emotions can help regulating

disproportionate excitement to not lose focus. But it can also be a guidance for calming yourself down when fright to fail takes over focus (Ivcevic & Brackett, 2015).

Negative affect often results in narrow attentional focus and therefore hinders creativity. However, when someone might be able to turn negative affect around in positive affect it might be beneficial to someone’s creativity (Bledow et al., 2013). To turn negative affect around, the cognitive reappraisal strategy is commonly used. Individuals who experience negative affect often highlight specific problems within a task that need to be investigated, it therefore focusses on unexpected information. Someone’s creativity can benefit from this, but only when they subsequentially experience a phase of positive affect to actually solve the problem (Bledow et al., 2013). To benefit from this specific kind of creativity where unexpected information originates in a negative mind, the emotion regulation strategy cognitive reappraisal has to be used to emerge into real actions. Therefore, we hypothesize:

H2: Trait procrastination indirectly and negatively affects creativity through negative affect

H3: Emotion regulation moderates the relationship between negative affect and creativity, such that a person is able to regulate negative emotions and moods, and revert them to positive, to buffer the negative relation between negative affect and creativity.

Method

To test the hypotheses that are formulated according to the theoretical framework, data was analyzed. Data were collected through surveys that were distributed by 7 Bachelor students from the University of Amsterdam, faculty Business Administration. We collected quantitative data through means of a

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questionnaire to test the hypotheses. The variables that were used in the research were trait

procrastination, creativity, negative affect and emotion regulation. The data was analyzed using SPSS.

Design, Sample and Procedure

For this study a cross-sectional design was utilized.A cross-sectional survey design is a

questionnaire that collects data from a population in a certain point of time (Lavrakas, 2008). The data was collected through means of an anonymous online questionnaire. A total of 377 participants was collected. For this study convenience sampling was used: participants were sampled through personal contacts of Bachelor students of the University of Amsterdam. The data collection was performed in two phases. The first phase is covered by four students over the time period of one month, the next phase is covered by the three other students over the time period of one month. The questionnaires that were distributed were part of a larger study, other variables measured in this questionnaire will be reported elsewhere.

Only the participants who completed the brick question that measures creativity were included in this analysis, resulting in a final sample of 191 participants. Of the participants, 61.3% of the respondents was female, with an age range between 14 and 68 years (M = 30,21, SD = 14,28).

Measures

Trait procrastination. Trait procrastination was measured with the 9 item General Procrastination

Scale (GPA-9) of Sirois, Yang and van Eerde (2019). Example items are “I often find myself

performing tasks that I had intended to do days before.” and “I generally delay before starting work I have to do.”. Participants rated their agreement with each item on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = False to 5 = True for me). The scale showed sufficient reliability as the Cronbach’s alpha = 0.850.

Creativity. To measure someone’s creativity, the creative ideation task can be used as an indicator.

Creative ideation tasks are open tasks where a participant has to come up with original ideas (Fink & Benedek, 2014). The generation of creative ideas as a result of an open task is considered an essential element of creativity, and therefore acts as a good measurement for creativity (Fink & Benedek, 2014). In this case, participants of our questionnaire are asked to list as many different ways in which a brick can be used. They had three minutes time to type their answers but could also choose to move to the next question in the questionnaire after one minute. We recorded the time spent on task if it was less than 3 minutes. Subsequentially, three trained raters rated the respondents answers independently on two factors, cognitive flexibility and on originality. Cognitive flexibility represents the diversity of the different ideas someone comes up with. If someone is high in cognitive flexibility, the number of divergent ideas in the creative ideation task is also high (de Bloom et al., 2014). In this case, there are seven categories that cover the divergent ideas. Therefore, the highest rating of cognitive flexibility is

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seven. Common example categories for ‘cognitive flexibility’ are “building” and “destroying something”.

Originality is rated based on three aspects. The first aspect is that creative ideas should be uncommon and unique, there are only a few participants that come up with such an idea. Secondly, the idea has to be remote in order to be creative. In other words, widely used objects and concepts have to be linked to the brick in an uncommon way. Lastly, creative ideas are ingenious. People should perceive them as clever, insightful and suitable. The raters scored each individual idea on a five-point rating scale from 1 (not at all creative) to five (extremely creative). For each answer, the three individual ratings of originality were averaged.

The ratings of the brick task showed sufficient reliability as the Kappa’s of the ratings of cognitive flexibility are 0.657, 0.708 and 0.773. The originality variable was used in this research as the measurement of creativity.

Negative affect. Negative affect was measured with the International Positive and Negative Affect

Schedule Short-Form (I-PANASSF) by Thompson (2007). The I-PANAS-SF consists of two five-item mood scales: one measures positive affectivity and the other measures negative affectivity. This study focusses on negative affect and therefore we only use the negative affect mood scale. For example, the items measure to what extent participants generally feel “upset” or “nervous”. Participants rated their agreement with each item on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = Never to 5 = Always). The scale showed sufficient reliability as the Cronbach’s alpha = 0.670

Emotion regulation. Emotion regulation was measured with the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire

(ERQ) of Gross and John (2003). It represents a 10-item scale designed to measure participants’ tendency to regulate their emotions in two ways: (1) Cognitive Reappraisal and (2) Expressive Suppression. This research focusses on the cognitive reappraisal part of the questionnaire, which consists of 6 items. Example items are “When I’m faced with a stressful situation, I make myself think about it in a way that helps me stay calm.” And “When I want to feel more positive emotion, I change the way I'm thinking about the situation.”. Participants rated their agreement with each item on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = Strongly disagree to 7 = Strongly agree). The scale showed sufficient reliability as the Cronbach’s alpha = 0.818.

Control variables. To rule out other possible effects on the dependent variable, two control variables,

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Analytical plan

To test Hypothesis 1, the relationship between trait procrastination and creativity, a linear regression was utilized with creativity as the dependent variable and trait procrastination as the independent variable.

For Hypothesis 2, the interaction effect between negative affect and emotion regulation on creativity, the PROCESS macro of Hayes (2018) Model 14 was utilized. Model 14, where our dependent variable is a creativity score, the independent variable is the procrastination trait, the mediator is negative affect, and a moderator, which moderates the relationship between negative affect and creativity is emotion regulation.

Results

Descriptives and correlation

Table 1: Means, Standard Deviations and correlation

This research uses a Pearson’s correlation analyses to get an overview of the data. Table 1 contains the means, standard deviations, and correlations of the key variables and control variables. According to the table, there is a significant positive correlation between the variables ‘trait procrastination’ and ‘negative affect’ (r = 0.348, p < 0.01). There is also a significant positive correlation between creativity and emotion regulation (r = 0.172, p < 0.05) and there is a significant negative correlation between negative affect and emotion regulation (r = -0.152, p < 0.05).

According to the theoretical framework, we expected that the independent variable, trait procrastination, has a negative effect on the dependent variable, creativity, other research shows that procrastination has a positive effect on creativity. However, there is no significant correlation between procrastination and creativity.

Assumptions

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relationship, multivariate normality, no or little multicollinearity, no auto-correlation and

homoscedasticity. All the assumptions are met. However, we should be careful when we interpret the results as the linear relationship between trait procrastination and creativity is relatively low.

Hypotheses tests

We expect that having a higher procrastination trait has a direct negative effect on creativity (H1), as well as the indirect negative effect on creativity through negative affect (H2). However, we also expect that the negative indirect effect of procrastination through negative effect on creativity is moderated by the emotion regulation (H3). In other words, if a person is able to regulate negative emotions and moods, and revert them to positive, there is less impact of negative affect on creativity. Figure 2 shows the conceptual model including the coefficients.

Figure 2 Conceptual model with corresponding co-efficient values N = 175

* p<.05, **p<.01

Figure 2 shows all the paths between the variables with the corresponding co-efficient values. In Figure 2 it can be seen that the path direct effect from procrastination to negative affect was positive and statistically significant (b= .189, s.e. = .045, p < .001), indicating that people who are more likely to procrastinate are also more likely to experience negative affect. The path direct effect from negative affect to creativity was positive and not statistically significant (b= .112, s.e. = .097, p = .251),

indicating that individuals that have negative affect are not more likely to be less creative. The path direct effect from procrastination to creativity was negative and not statistically significant (b= -.035, s.e. = .070, p = .623), indicating that individuals that procrastinate are not more likely to be less creative.

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Table 2 Summary of analysis of moderated mediation analysis of Emotion regulation = Moderator, Negative

affect = Mediator, Trait procrastination = independent variable and Creativity = dependent variable (Model 14 of PROCESS macro)

The first model shows that there is no significant direct effect of procrastination on creativity. According to Table 2, the coefficient value is negative at -0.035 (p= 0.62) and confidence intervals contain the value of 0. This means that the data does not support Hypothesis 1.

Table 3 Summary of analysis of conditional indirect effect

The second model shows the indirect effect of procrastination through the mediator of negative affect, moderated by emotion regulation. According to Table 3, the effect of the negative effect on creativity is around 0.017 to 0.026 for different values of emotion regulation. However, the effect is statistically non-distinguishable from 0 because the confidence intervals contain a value of 0. This means that the data does not support Hypothesis 2, and no indirect effects of procrastination through negative effects on creativity can be found.

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Table 4 Index of moderated mediation analysis

Hypothesis 3 is also not supported. The results are shown in Table 4, the index of moderated mediation is close to 0, and bootstrapped confidence intervals also contain 0. This means that in the sample we observed, emotion regulation does not moderate the negative effect on creativity.

What is interesting, taking the bootstrapped results into account, is that regulation strategies have a direct positive impact on creativity, a coefficient of 0.157, which means that for 1 point increase in emotion regulation, a person scores 0.15 points higher in creativity. The confidence interval does not contain 0.

Lastly, from the results of the first model in the bootstrapped results (the effect of the

independent variable on mediator) we can see that procrastination indeed has a statistically significant positive effect on negative affect or negative emotions. This means that people who are more likely to procrastinate are also more likely to experience negative affect. For every one-point increase in the procrastination trait scale, negative affect goes up to 0.18 points.

Discussion

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between trait procrastination and creativity, and the roles of ‘negative affect’ and ‘emotion regulation strategies’. The research question was: “How does trait procrastination affect creativity?”. To answer the research question three hypotheses, based on the theoretical framework, were formed and tested.

The results did not support the first hypothesis, which stated that trait procrastination

negatively affects creativity. This indicates that there is no effect of trait procrastination on creativity. Subsequently, the second hypothesis, which states that trait procrastination indirectly and negatively affects creativity through negative affect, was rejected. The purpose of this mediation analysis was to investigate the influence of negative affect could explain the relation between trait procrastination and creativity. However, there was no significant direct effect nor an indirect effect. Finally, the third hypothesis, which stated that emotion regulation strategies moderate the relationship between negative affect and creativity, was rejected as well. Whether an individual can regulate negative emotions and

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Despite the fact that the hypotheses were not confirmed, there were three findings that were significant. Firstly, the positive correlation between trait procrastination and negative affect. This is also confirmed by Staiton et al., (2000), as individuals who procrastinate usually suffer from a low self-image and negative affect. Trait procrastinators often have automatic negative thoughts about themselves to be unable to start a project or to finish a project, these thoughts are not motivating someone to start with their project and result in procrastination. Secondly, this research confirms the positive correlation between emotion regulation and creativity. When someone is able to regulate their emotions, they can tone overwhelming emotions down to get their thoughts clear. It helps people to achieve an open mindset that can generate new ideas and insights, without getting distracted by a freighting negative emotion or a distracting positive emotion (Ivcevic & Brackett, 2015). Finally, the negative correlation between negative affect and emotion regulation is confirmed. As emotional stable individuals are calmer and handle negative feelings better, they perform better at their tasks (Salgado, 1997). Therefore, once people are over their negative affect and have reached the calmness, they do not necessarily need to implement the emotion regulation strategy as this is activated automatically. Based on the results, the research question cannot be answered conclusively. Three possible limitations of the research can explain the rejection of the hypotheses. The first possible explanation is that the data sample is too small. From the original 377 participants, the final sample consisted of only 191 participants. Before the alternative uses task started, which measured creativity, the option was given to participate in the 3 minute question, or to skip it. This possibly resulted in a situation where the participants were likely to skip this question, as it appeared after the questionnaire was conducted that people perceived it as quite long. The second possible explanation is that there is just no

relationship between the variables. It might be the case that the time pressure that comes with

procrastination is related to creativity differently per person. The stress that is related to time pressure can result in a state of panic where thinking clearly becomes difficult. On the other hand, stress can also result in a state where someone is seeking for extra unique solutions to finish a task in time, their mind comes in a particular survival mode where they are extra alert. Therefore, creativity might be related positively to procrastination for some people and related negatively for others. However, previous research supports the curvilinear relationship between procrastination and creativity. This brings us to the next possible explanation; the executed method was not right. The alternative uses task that measured creativity consisted of originality and cognitive flexibility. However, this research only used the originality contribution of the alternative uses task. This research could have investigated the relationship between cognitive flexibility and trait procrastination, but we did not do that because of the scope of the thesis. Another methodological limitation was the model used in the research. We wanted to investigate particular effects of variables on other variables, however, a cross-sectional design was used which points out relations but not directional effects. It might be better to execute an experimental research, where one variable is manipulated to see if it has an effect on another variable.

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The previous mentioned limitations of this research give the opportunity to research this subject in the future with new insights. Future research should collect a larger dataset where all participants fill in the full questionnaire. In addition, the alternative uses test can be rated by more trained individuals to increase the reliability and make it less personal. Furthermore, not only originality should be taken into account but also cognitive flexibility. Moreover, the alternative uses task can be substituted by another measurement of creativity, for example Kaufman Domains of Creativity Scale (K-DOCS) that measures the general self-rated creativity of an individual. Finally, the variable stress in relation with trait procrastination and creativity can be researched to investigate the divergent responses of stress. These solutions could have been taken into account within this research, but because of the limited scope and time frame of this thesis we decided not to.

In conclusion, this research does not confirm that there is a relationship between trait procrastination and creativity. The significant relations that were found are the correlations between trait procrastination and negative affect, emotion regulation and creativity, and correlation negative affect and emotion regulation. Furthermore, the links that are made in the theoretical framework can be used in future research and tested in a different manner. For example, an experimental research design, instead of a cross-sectional design, with the aim to test the assumed causal relationships. An alternative for the alternative uses task can be example Kaufman Domains of Creativity Scale. In addition to the theoretical framework, the phenomenon stress might be an interesting variable to investigate. As this thesis had to be completed in twelve weeks, there was a limited scope and time. Therefore, these recommendations are not taken into account in this research. However, this research does contribute to the existing research concerning creativity and procrastination by offering new knowledge and proposing future research methods and theory.

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Appendix

Appendix table 1: Kappa

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Appendix table 3 - Kappa

Appendix table 4 - Cronbach’s alfa for trait procrastination:

Appendix table 5 - Cronbach’s alfa for Negative affect:

Appendix table 6 - Cronbach’s alfa for Emotion regulation strategies:

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Assumptions testing:

Appendix figure 1: Assumptions for the relationship between the IVs and the DV is linear.

The first assumption is that the relationship between the predictor variable (trait procrastination) and the outcome variable (creativity) should be linear. However, according to the scatterplot there is only a slight linear relationship. We have to take this into account when interpreting the results of the

regression.

Assumption 2: The values of the residuals are independent Not a concern for a cross-sectional survey

Appendix figure 2: Assumptions for normality for the independent variable

Assumption three states that the residuals should be normally distributed. The line in the normal probability plot shows that the data is normally distributed.

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Appendix figure 3: scatterplot for homoscedacity

The fourth assumption is that the residuals should be equally variable. The scatterplot shows that the observations are about the same distance from the regression line for any value of length, there seems to be no question of heteroscedasticity.

Appendix table 9: assumption 5 – multicollinearity

The fifth assumption is that there should be no multicollinearity in the data. The VIF, shown in the coefficients table, is below 10, indicating the assumption is met.

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Appendix questions from questionnaire that are used in this thesis:

Q1 - What is your gender?

1. Male 2. Female 3. Other

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Q7 - Please be as honest and accurate as you can throughout. Try not to let your response to one statement influence your responses to other statements. There are no "correct" or "incorrect" answers. Answer according to your own feelings, rather than how you think "most people" would answer.

# Field Minimum Maximum

1 I often find myself performing tasks that I had intended to do days _before. 1.00 5.00 2 Even with jobs that require little else except sitting down and doing them,

I find they seldom get done for days. 1.00 5.00

3 I generally delay before starting work I have to do. 1.00 5.00

4 In preparing for some deadlines, I often waste time by doing other things. 1.00 5.00

5 I often have a task finished sooner than necessary. 1.00 5.00

6 I usually buy even an essential item at the last minute. 1.00 5.00

7 I usually accomplish all the things I plan to do in a day. 1.00 5.00

8 I am continually saying I’ll do it tomorrow. 1.00 5.00

9 I usually take care of all the tasks I have to do before I settle down and

relax for the evening. 1.00 5.00

PANAS - Thinking about yourself and how you normally feel, to what extent do you generally feel:

1 Upset 1.00 5.00 2 Hostile 1.00 5.00 3 Alert 1.00 5.00 4 Ashamed 1.00 5.00 5 Inspired 1.00 5.00 6 Nervous 1.00 5.00 7 Determined 1.00 5.00 8 Attentive 1.00 5.00 9 Afraid 1.00 5.00 10 Active 1.00 5.00

ERQ - We would like to ask you some questions about your emotional life, in particular, how you control (that is, regulate and manage) your emotions. The questions below involve two distinct aspects

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of your emotional life. One is your emotional experience, or what you feel like inside. The other is your emotional expression, or how you show your emotions in the way you talk, gesture, or behave. Although some of the following questions may seem similar to one another, they differ in important ways. For each item, please answer using the following scale provided:

1 When I want to feel more positive emotion (such as joy or amusement), _{I change what I'm thinking about.} 24.00 30.00

2 I keep emotions to myself. 24.00 30.00

3 When I want to feel less negative emotion (such as sadness or anger), I _{change what I'm thinking about.} 24.00 30.00 4 When I am feeling positive emotions, I am careful not to express them. 24.00 29.00 5 When I'm faced with a stressful situation, I make myself think about it _{in a way that helps me stay calm.} 24.00 30.00

6 I control my emotions by not expressing them. 24.00 30.00

7 When I want to feel more positive emotion, I change the way I'm

thinking about the situation. 24.00 30.00 8 I control my emotions by changing the way I think about the situation _{I'm in.} 24.00 30.00 9 When I am feeling negative emotions, I make sure not to express them. 24.00 30.00 10 When I want to feel less negative emotion, I change the way I'm _{thinking about the situation.} 24.00 30.00

Q19 - Please list below as many different uses you can think of for an ordinary brick. You will have three minutes to enter all of your ideas. After that, you will automatically be forwarded to the next page, where some questions about this task will follow.

The effect of trait procrastination on creativity